


Until Ba Sing Se

by QueenoftheNyx



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Haru' parents are happy and they deserve it, Het, Jet is working through some Stuff, M/M, Not beta read we die ambiguously like certain complicated characters, Rarepair, Violence tagged only pertains to the time Jet tried to be a mass murderer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenoftheNyx/pseuds/QueenoftheNyx
Summary: After nearly destroying the valley, Jet and what's left of his loyal friends work towards redemption by escorting refugees along what is called the Omashu Trail. Amongst the other guides on the trail is Haru, an earthbender determined to do his part outside his village and to get to know the guy who seems to have also met Katara.Story requested by avatarnerdkiller on tumblr.
Relationships: Haru/Jet (Avatar)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	Until Ba Sing Se

Campfire light does strange, telling things to people’s faces. In the spare seconds between perfect shadow and crackles of light people let down their guard. If one watches, as Jet always watches, one can catch small, incomplete expressions of truth. Intentions and hopes reveal themselves under the comforting mask of warmth and night. Filling food and storytelling like they have tonight expose even more to those who pay attention.

Tonight, an earthbender on the cusp of adulthood takes the lion’s share of Jet’s attention. 

A whisper of new whiskers under a long sharp nose and above thin lips. The green eyes strikingly bright, almost mocking. Good genes all around. And, if his clothes without repairs and his shoes without holes mean anything, they mean he comes from at least a little money.

Jet’s gaze drifts away. Eyeing, judging the others in the circle. Fighters, army deserters, earthbenders, and of course himself and two of his freedom fighters. Ten total guides on this pilgrimage down the Omashu Trail. Not that the trail goes anywhere but to Ba Sing Se, or even maintains one singular path.

A laugh pulls him back to the young earthbender. Next to him sits the eldest of their guides, who has her long, silvered-brown hair over her shoulders and across her neck like a scarf, tells an animated tale of fighting a rogue water-bender atop an iceberg at sea. Having been on the receiving end of water-bending, Jet doesn’t give the story any credence, but the earthbender listens, enthralled.

“Northern or Southern?” Jet asks, his voice cutting through not only the story but every other conversation around the fire. He ploughs through the glances tossed his way, “which tribe? North or South?”

The elder crosses a leg over her knee and leans back with a sneer, “south!”

Jet smiles back, “bullshit. Unless you mean to tell me you fought the Avatar too.”

The circle all for Jet’s group and the earthbender erupt into ridiculing laughter. The Avatar! Ha!

Jet smiles and when the laughter simmers down, and people return to their conversations he tips what’s left in his bowl into Longshot’s and leaves the fireside. He glides by the other fires in their camp, doing yet another headcount on the refugees they’re escorting. Their number large as people clamber to get to Ba Sing Se before winter sets in.

“Hey.”

Jet glances back, repeating the number twelve in his head so he doesn’t lose count, and watches the earthbender from earlier walk over.

“Do you- This might sound crazy, but do you know Katara?”

Jet fiddles with the stem in his mouth with the tip of his tongue, regretting his choice to speak-up now, “yeah. I did. Guess you did too?”

“I did! She rescued my father and I from a Fire Nation prison. Liberated everyone there. Well, with Aang and Sokka’s help, but… Well you’ve met her. You know what’s she’s like.”

He does indeed and of course she would liberate an entire prison. Of course. Jet shakes his head and resumes his counting. He gets to twenty-three when the earthbender interrupts again.

“So, what did she do when you met her?”

Froze me to the side of a tree to prevent a mass murder, Jet thinks. He twirls his stem once before actually answer, “they saved an entire village from drowning.”

“Incredible,” the earthbender breathes with a smile that out glows the fires.

Jet nods in agreement. The word monster bounces off the walls of his skull, leaving a sour substance wherever it lands. It will take days for him to scrub-off the residue with self-assurances that he has changed since that day.

After Longshot had found him, and after enough of the ice had softened so he could be chiseled-out by his comrades, they had gone to do reconnaissance. To see if they were at all successful.

They weren’t. The number of troops remained the same. And those same soldiers he had so fiercely desired to see floating dead in the river began to resettle the displaced townsfolk Sokka’s words rang in his head. Fathers and mothers and children. Jet, for once in all his calculations, in all his plans to save the valley, counted the price.

79 men. 85 women. 106 children.

“The name’s Haru, by the way.”

Jet glances back at him, resigned to having to restart his counting.

“Jet.”

***  
  


Winter has finally finished closing her icy fist upon the world. A boon for the guides of the Omashu Trail. While Fire Nation troops find more and more of their routes impassable due to frost, they travel safe below those impassable places, where the ground is slow to relinquish its hoarded summer warmth beneath blankets of snow.

The only issue, as always, is they cannot stay underground full-time. They still need air, sunlight, and they can’t use any fire while they go below, not since their last Canary-Robin died. They can’t risk hitting a gas pocket.

So, at twilight they surface and make camp. The easiest nights are when they find a cave. Plenty of ventilation, easily guarded, and warm. They hardest nights they pass huddled under furs and cloaks, sheltered only by outcroppings of earth erected by already exhausted benders.

Tonight is one of the difficult ones.

When Jet returns from his shift of patrol and finishes his second head count of their 20 charges he goes straight to Smellerbee and Longshot. The three of them share a singular, shabby fur they traded for. It covers them all, granted that Smellerbee sleeps on her stomach on top of Longshot, which works best. With his slim figure he needs the extra heat.

With minimal clanking Jet sets aside his hook blades and lifts the edge of the fur so almost no draft can disturb them and slips underneath. He resists the temptation to put his cold feet under Longshot’s legs. Last time had shocked the kid awake and his movement had woken Smellerbee, and then, in a matter of seconds, the rest of the camp was awake too.

For such a small girl, Smellerbee had the lungs of a badgermole.

Jet settles for putting his reddened nose into Longshot’s sleeve and curling in on himself.

Still, he does not sleep. Someone nearby shivers so violently their teeth clack. Lowering the fur only down to his nose, Jet peers around. Haru, he finds a yard or two away covered with only a blanket as thin as a dry blade of grass.

With the greatest reluctance Jet moves to collect him. He can’t let the guy freeze to death and leave them a bender short; nor even worse, let Haru suffer a night without sleep and have him cause an accidental cave-in.

“Haru,” Jet hisses, more from frustration than for the need to remain quiet, “follow me.”

He does as instructed, stumbling over cold, tired muscles as Jet slips back under the fur. Jet holds it open above him.

“There’s not r-r-room.”

Jet tugs him down and Haru lands on top of him with less grace than a hogmonkey. Smellerbee grunts as the impact jostles her too but makes no other sound. Jet wiggles so Haru’s head is against his shoulder and the rest of the weight settles comfortably enough for the both of them.

“Je-et, I-I-I don’t…”

“Shh,” Jet shushes, “this is the fastest way to warm-up. So, warm-up and go to sleep.”

It takes longer than he will ever admit to fall asleep. What with the occasional, whole-body shudders Haru’s body gives as it defrosts and the distracting strand of hair that has landed across the bridge of Jet’s nose. When his fingertips push it away, the silky texture exists in pure rebellion of their traveling. Good genes, comfortable living, strong bender, _and_ nice hair? Apparently, the only things Haru lacks in life are good sense and something warm to sleep in.

In the three weeks it takes them to reach the checkpoint outside Ba Sing Se, Haru shares their fur. Now that he doesn’t start-off as a block of ice each time, Jet doesn’t mind having Haru on his chest, his pretty hair in his face, or the tangle their legs become by the dawn of each morning.

When they do leave the checkpoint, Haru regains the fur he had lent to a trio of young siblings. Full of news from the capital, a few days rest and fresh provisions, they start their return journey. There are always people who need to get to Ba Sing Se.

Their first night, Jet goes on the first patrol and when he returns Smellerbee and Longshot sleep under a thicker, newer fur, and Haru, not terribly far at all from them, has their old one.

Jet leans on one foot and then the other as he decides his next action.

Green eyes, bright even in the dim of the dying embers peek out at him. Haru lifts the fur and makes Jet’s decision for him.

“Just to get warm again,” Jet says as he slots himself over Haru.

A warm breath trickles over his ear as a soft laugh and two arms brace tenderly against his back. Haru says nothing and Jet does not move until morning.

***

Scouting usually does not include the earthbenders. Great in a fight, but hardly light footed. Better left with the main group in case a hasty, subterranean escape is needed.

Still this perfectly logical use of talents and abilities does not deter Haru, who comes with him on his scouting mission today. When Haru had volunteered Longshot had frowned, set his eyes on Haru then back at Jet.

_You’re just… Letting him?_

Jet didn’t have the energy to argue then. Nightmares robbed of sleep the night before. Flashes of fire. Pale faces in water. His mother’s screams and the roar of ignited blasting jelly. Haru’s body heat and the steady drum of his heart soothed Jet back into the present, but sleep did not come back for him.

Now, two days later after Jet has gotten a decent night’s sleep, he sees the folly of letting Haru join them.

Scouting the next leg of their journey means assessing Fire Nation camps. While troop movements have slowed, it doesn’t mean the encampments haven’t moved due to frost or wind. This requires they split-up to cover each side of the riverbed, and Haru knows absolutely zero bird calls.

“You’re kidding me,” Smellerbee deadpans when Haru produces more spit than sound when he tries to imitate their distress call.

“He’ll stick with me. Smellerbee head North, Longshot, head South. We’ll check the West bank as best we can.”

Haru, Jet decides in a matter of minutes, has many amenable qualities, but he’s shit at stealth. Every twig or leaf snaps or crackles under his feet, every branch within a mile of him rustle in greeting, and he likes to talk, and grunt, and clear his throat, and-

“Shut-up!”

Haru rears back at the volume of Jet’s voice and several birds take alarmed flight from the tree above them.

Sighing, then regaining his temper, the one usually reserved solely for Fire Nation soldiers, Jet tries again, “listen, we don’t want to alert anyway we’re here. You have to be- Umph!”

A single finger with dirt permanently encrusted under the nail presses to his mouth while the other hand gestures for him to listen.

Rustling, footsteps, the dull thud of metal armor hitting leather.

They throw themselves down into the underbrush and keep low to the ground. Haru’s hand, warm and powerful pushes against his back, forcing him lower. For a second Jet can only think of how the span of his fingers neatly reaches across the backs of both shoulders. Then, just beyond the exposed roots, a pair of Fire Nation Army issue boots steps into their line of sight.

“Who’s there?”

Hackles raised, Jet listens. The voice is hesitant, afraid, and there’s a distinct lack of fire bending being used to illuminate the still early morning.

“Probably a moose-lion cub or something. Let’s leave it alone,” a second voice says, just as tentative and soft as the first. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Holding Jet down, Haru rises to a squat and calls to the disappearing soldier:

“Your uniform is on backwards!”

Jet rises just in time to see one of them fling a slice of earth at Haru, who catches it and bites into it with his fingertips and crumbles it into a useless heap. The soldier raises the arms in surrender, but their shoulders betray their relief. A fellow earthbender is far better than what they expected.

As Haru conducts wary introductions, Jet unsheathes his hook blades as he judges their new company. Haru was right: the uniforms are backward. Clearly, they got dressed in the dark, or never got a good enough look at how the uniforms are worn.

“Resistance fighters?” Jet asks

“Prisoners,” the shorter one of the pair answers.

Details are exchanged in return for joining the other refugees in their charge. Camp locations, approximate numbers, and how long ago they escaped.

Jet puts away his blades, “take them back to camp.”

“What are you going to do?” Haru asks.

“I count five more mouths to feed. Now that I know where to look, me and the others can go do a supply raid. I need you to get them back safely.”

Haru smiles, “I suppose I _am_ too loud for what you have planned. Good luck.”

“Won’t need it.”

A pause. A beat. Jet struggles to break free of Haru’s unreadable gaze. Concerning, since Jet prides himself on knowing how to read people.

Haru blinks first. He claps his hand on Jet’s shoulder and leaves.

***

“Jet. Jet? Are you asleep?”

He shakes his head against Haru’s collarbone. Sleep has avoided him the last few nights, only coming to him kicking and screaming, giving him nightmares in retribution for deigning to close his eyes.

“Me neither. I keep dreaming that I’ll return home and my father will be imprisoned again and my mother turned-out of our house and her shop burned to the ground because I wasn’t there to protect her.”

Jet wraps his arms a little tighter around Haru’s middle. He does not lack for warmth, but they both lack for comfort. In his sleep-deprived delirium, he actually admits to his nightmares.

“I’m attacking a Fire Nation soldier and then, when he goes down it turns out to be Smellerbee. Or Longshot. And _I’m_ actually the soldier the entire time.”

Haru shifts under him, hips canting so Jet fits more solidly along his frame, so Jet sets more closely under his chin. One hand strokes against his spine.

“At least yours can’t come true.”

“You don’t really know me,” Jet reminds.

He’s made every effort to keep his history from Haru. Soft, bleeding-heart Haru can have his body heat, his patience, even his friendship, but not that. Jet has enough self-loathing that he doesn’t need to see it mirrored in Haru. It would kill something soft and kind in the world, and while Jet may not deserve it, the war has killed enough soft and kind things.

“I know there’s something big you regret.”

Too close too close too close too close too close.

Haru catches him before he jumps back too far, reels him back in against his chest, “hey, hey it’s alright. You just mutter in your sleep sometimes. It’s alright. Shh, stay here.”

Jet eventually eases back into his grip; helped along by strong fingers that scratch soothing lines over his scalp and quiet assurance that he hasn’t revealed anything specific. Only that he cries out that he’s sorry.

“I didn’t mean to upset you. I just, I want you to know I don’t think you’re like them. You could never be like the Fire Nation. You’re good all the way down to your core.”

“You _really_ don’t know me then,” Jet half-chuckles, half-chokes. He’s so close to crying into Haru’s wide, sheltering shoulder that his body begs for the permission to do so. Haru would let him, wouldn’t think any less of him either. Haru is the one who is good down to his core.

“I know you kept me warm that first night.”

Because they needed Haru alive for the mission.

“I see you give half your share of rations to your friends every night.”

Because Longshot’s aim suffers without enough protein. Because Smellerbee expends so much more energy keeping up with people twice her size.

“You showed that little girl how to use a knife when no one else would.

Because everyone needs to learn to fight. For everyone’s safety.

“Sometimes,” Haru’s voice drops low, taking on a tone Jet hasn’t heard in his voice before, “sometimes when I hear you laugh or when I see you fight you move so- I just. _I forget to breathe_.”

Jet goes lightheaded, mind blank even though a primal part of him understands. He forgets to breathe too.

“Go to sleep,” he rasps with a suddenly sandy voice, as if his throat has never known a single drop of water. He swallows and builds a high, high wall that rivals those of Ba Sing Se. “We’re just delirious.”

Haru nods, but not in agreement.

***

As the Spring thaw approaches, the leaders of the Omashu Trail mission tell their guides to go home and regroup later. Jet begrudgingly sees the logic. Their guide group in particular has been going non-stop since mid-Fall. While the Fire Nation has had the winter to rest, restock, and ready themselves the second nature allows. They, on the other hand, are a bedraggled, bony-weary mess. If they want to contend with renewed forces of the Fire Nation, they need rest.

Haru takes them home with him.

He did not ask. He did not invite. He merely picked up his and Jet’s belongings and told Smellerbee and Longshot to follow him. With no other options, they followed.

Their journey to Haru’s home has them skirting the edges of Gaoling where the scent of rich food drifts hangs in the air around homes and makes their mouths flood with want.

“Don’t worry. We’ll have our fill. Mom makes the best dumplings in town,” Haru says with a homesick grin.

Jet grins back, but when Haru’s gaze turns away, Jet tries and fails to remember if his mother made dumplings or not. Or the last time he was around anyone’s mother for that matter.

They arrive just after dawn, and in the morning light, Haru’s mother looks exactly like a woman who has seen both her husband and son taken away from her. Tired, cautious, overjoyed to see her son alive and well. Wary as she is, she does welcome them in with a smile and serves them rice porridge. Haru’s father nabs his son the second he empties his plate.

“You’re with me today,” he says before he carts Haru away with him towards the mines.

Haru’s mother turns to the rest of them, “You can go rest the next room. Unless you’d like to earn a copper piece or two at the store with me.”

She finds tasks for all of them. She uses Longshot’s good eyes to measure, Smellerbee’s small stature to clean the nooks and crannies, and Jet’s charm to haggle with customers. Throughout the day Jet tries to find any similarities in the mother and son besides the long hair and nose and comes up empty. At least, until she pays them for their labor at the end of the day.

Three copper pieces. Each.

“We can’t accept this.”

She lifts a shoulder in disinterest at his humility, “you can either take it now or I can sneak it into your things later. Makes no difference to me.”

They bow in thanks.

As they make it back to the house, they spy Haru and his father coming back from the mines on another path, covered head-to-toe in soot.

“No!” Haru’s mother chortles as they spot one another and Haru’s father hastens his stride. “Don’t you even- No!”

He grabs her up, coating her robes black and planting a smudged kiss on each cheek. She giggles as a child as she smacks her husband on the chest, demanding he clean-up his mess. With a wave of gentle earthbending the dust lifts off her and floats over to the not yet tilled garden, descending down like rain.

Jet does not notice the smile stretched out on his own face until he meets Haru’s eyes and sees a matching smile there.

Haru lifts the dust off himself, but instead of depositing it where it could be most beneficial, he makes three lightly packed dust-balls. Jet reaches for his blades, only to remember he left them in the house. Fighting an unarmed opponent, very unfair.

The first ball flies towards him and misses, shattering into a dark cloud on impact. Jet runs, his laughter propelling him forward as he ducks behind the barn to miss the second volley. He watches the blind spots around the building, but he ought to have known that wouldn’t be Haru’s strategy. Afterall, he’d been watching him make tunnels for months now.

A slight rumble alerts him too late. Haru breaches the surface and nails him between the eyes with the last dust ball.

Jet’s eyes slam shut, watering past the lids. Over his coughing he hears Haru’s rushed apologies. On his shoulders sit two large clumsy, yet skilled hands; a warm solid presence to rock into as he tries to expel coal dust from his lungs.

“Open your eyes for me.”

“No,” Jet hacks.

“Trust me.”

And he does. Trust him. And for him he opens his eyes, slowly like rusted gears that’ve forgotten their purpose, but they crack open. One hand lifts while the other holds him steady as Haru extracts the soot from his eyes.

“Better?” he asks with a voice tinged with regret.

His eyes still stick, still upset to have ever been intruded upon, but Jet nods.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Of course.”

They linger a moment. Haru’s hand on his shoulder, their faces close. Jet’s vision clears, only for it to go unfocused as Harus shifts closer. Jet inhales a little too quick and starts to cough again.

“Sorry!” Haru grimaces, patting his back as Jet turns to cough into the wall of the barn, his face burning for far different reasons, “I’d try to pull it out, but I’m afraid it’d just make it worse.”

When Jet can breathe again, once he has gathered himself, he turns with an easy smile. “It’s fine, now you said something about dumplings?”

Haru, like most things is right about that too.

***

Their second night staying at Haru’s home, Haru had placed his bedroll as close to Jet’s as possible, claiming he couldn’t sleep without Jet’s constant fidgeting in the night. Jet ignored the questioning glance he received from Longshot and Smellerbee at this statement, just as he ignored the silent relief blooming in his gut.

Now, Jet carefully unwinds Haru’s arm from around his waist and pads out of the room. He’s been certain for hours now that everyone else slept soundly, but his mind did not want to join them, so he put on his shoes, his cloak, and went for a walk around the perimeter of the property, he’d taken many midnight walks prior to Haru to tire himself to the point of sleep.

The cold fills his lungs, clean and crisp. He likes the cold, just so long as it does not bring snow. Snow melts, then leaks, then muddies everything until little orphans like him look no better than abandoned, weathered effigies left to forgotten spirits. The cold, without snow, is good. Bracing. Gives one the drive to survive. Snow just make survival that much more difficult.

No snow coats the ground here. Of course, it doesn’t. Everything to o with Haru’s home is magical and perfect. Laughing, loving parents. A reliable roof and warm walls. Of course, Haru, with all his tenderness, comes from a place like this. It’s no wonder that after a week here, Smellerbee and Longshot have started to dream of something different for themselves.

He rounds the yard, pausing to stare at the stars, watch the wisps of his breath curl around the moonlight framed heavens. He forgets all else. The ground beneath his feet, the friends that slumber safely inside, the almost man who steals his breath with no regard for the consequences of his thievery, and the choice he has to make sooner rather than later. He forgets it all. He forgets until Haru emerges from the house. The ratty-tatty fur he’d been almost sure his mother had thrown away tucked around his shoulders.

“You don’t have to patrol here,” Haru admonishes with a laugh as he approaches, “We ran off the Fire Nation months ago. We’re safe.”

“Why are you out here then?”

Haru just smiles like he knows that Jet knows why. Jet does and at his returned smile, Haru lifts one arm up, the fur lifting with it like a sheltering wing of a wolfbat. Jet ducks underneath, swamped immediately by heat. He goes back to looking at the stars, but only with a tenth of his previous enthusiasm. Haru’s fingers tease the ends of his hair, curling the strands round and round without tugging, as gentle and as appreciated as a breeze on a hot day. Jet’s fingertips skate up and down the wall of his back, his touch is not as gossamer as Haru’s but he tries anyway.

“When are we going to stop pretending we aren’t what we are?”

A thousand and one denials crowd Jet’s tongue, but then he swallows them whole. It’s better they talk about this; it’ll help him decide.

“What are we exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why does it matter?”

“Because!” Haru turns towards him, standing chest-to-chest, “we’re something, Jet. You and me. The two of us we’re… I want us to be…”

They both struggle. Haru with finding the right words, and Jet with the conversation he had earlier with Smellerbee and Longshot.

“They want to go to Ba Sing Se.”

Haru goes stiff in his arms, “you want to go with them.”

Not a question, but a certainty. And Jet knows that he’s right, like always. He does want to go; he knows he’ll lose them if he doesn’t. And as terrifyingly beautiful this unnamed _something_ could be with Haru, he won’t trade Smellerbee and Longshot for it. He can’t. Not after they stuck by him, gave him purpose when he’d lost his way.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

Jet grabs his shoulders and pulls him in tight, as if they were already at the checkpoint, and this is the last they’ll see of each other until… maybe forever. Haru holds him back, just as tight, his arms two pillars of stone wrapping around him.

“Until Ba Sing Se,” Haru starts, his voice dropping low and smooth again into his ear, “I want to be yours. And for you to be mine. Just until Ba Sing Se.”

“Until Ba Sing Se,” Jet agrees, moving only so much that they can breathe the same wintery fog as he speaks, “I’m yours and your mine.”

***

Months later, when Jet is found by the Avatar and his entourage as well as his own friends, he does not remember the war.

What he remembers is a fire that took his parents. A fire that drove him and his friends to build homes in the trees, where they spent nights telling stories and play-fighting. He remembers an explosion taking that away. Then, staying in mining town. With a lovely miner and his wife who owned a shop. Their earthbending son who was his for a time.

He remembers a hand to hold, a warm body curled around his at night, an always available smile with a sweet, sweet, shine in the eyes. His memories hold desperate moans hidden in the cacophony of the awakening Spring. Golden-pink mornings spent shirtless and plucking straw from each other’s hair because they had passed the previous night privately in the barn. Splattering kisses and giggles across bare skin as they got dressed.

And that’s what he thinks about when he tells Katara he’ll be fine


End file.
